Pride month has begun across the U.S., bringing parades and parties to big cities and small towns to celebrate LGBTQ+ people.
The rainbow-filled festivities this year come as President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing policies to roll back the rights of transgender people and curtail recognition of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Jordan Braxton, co-president of USA Prides, a organization of Pride groups, says the events have always been rooted in protest.
鈥淎 festival is a time to celebrate,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hose are acts of resistance, too.鈥�
The first Pride celebrations came in protest
The event has its roots in the violent police raid of New York’s a gay bar, on June 28, 1969.
The raid sparked a series of public protests and at a time when many LGBTQ+ people kept their identities to themselves.
To mark the first anniversary in June 1970, there were marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
Now, events take place in big cities, suburbs and small towns around the world.
President Bill Clinton proclaimed June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in the U.S. with an executive order in 1999. Since then, Democratic presidents have signed similar orders each year they’ve been in office. Republican presidents, including Trump, have not.
Now, many are celebrations with a dose of defiance
Parades and street fairs headline Pride celebrations. But there鈥檚 more to them than that.
San Francisco Pride includes a golf tournament and a human right summit. Twin Cities Pride in Minneapolis has a bar crawl, and Central Alabama Pride in Birmingham features a singing competition.
This year’s celebrations include main events in Los Angeles on June 14, Chicago on June 20 and 21, San Francisco on June 27 and New York on June 28. There are events this month in international cities including Paris, Rome, Sao Paulo and Tokyo.
While those events have been around for more than 50 years, this year marks just the sixth edition of a formal Pride celebration in Haddon Township, New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb. A parade is scheduled for Thursday, and a community night is Friday.
Isis Petrie Williams, president of Haddon Township Pride, said that the 2,000 to 3,000 people in the parade will include local high school marching bands, youth sports teams and many people passing out candy.
鈥淲e decided to have a radical expression of joy, acceptance and love, centered on exposure and community connection,鈥� she said.
Some policy changes have not been LGBTQ-friendly
For years, policies across the U.S. were generally becoming more welcoming to LGBTQ+ people, including in June 2015 when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalized same-sex marriage nationally.
In recent years, several policies have swung the other way.
The Supreme Court in March for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, saying it violated free speech protections.
During Pride Month last year, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a Tennessee ban on .
This decade, most Republican-controlled state governments have passed similar , barred transgender women and girls from female , and restricted which in schools 鈥� and, in some cases, other public places.
Trump has signed executive orders seeking some of the same policies on a federal level.
On Monday, one of those policies suffered a blow when a court ruled that the .
Some sponsors have pulled out of the celebrations
Last year, to Pride events.
Braxton said she鈥檚 noticed some investment firms pulling back this year, following companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Walmart last year.
鈥淚t鈥檚 all because of Trump鈥檚 DEI policies. Corporations are afraid that if they sponsor a Pride event, they are going to get scrutinized from this administration, which is completely sad,鈥� she said.
But she said that smaller events have seen local businesses boost sponsorships.
That’s been true for New Jersey’s Haddon Township Pride. Williams said the Coast Guard is the only major national sponsor that’s abandoned the event in recent years.
Meanwhile, local hospitals, restaurants, law firms, coffee shops and other businesses are contributing.
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